24 hr McD's

I thought that one of my great discoveries is the reading habit. The thing about reading is that there is no way you can ever finish reading everything you want to read. Therefore it is very unlikely that you will get truly sick and tired of that habit. I can get tired of music, to be sure. Or if I play a sport enough it can get really boring.

And for me the best time to read is in the wee hours of the morning, something I blogged about 2 months ago (sorry my bad habit is to put blog posts in my drafts folder and then publish them when it's time). And whereas in my uni days I found that the undergrad library serves this purpose well (at least until 2am) and some student dorm common rooms are open all night, there wasn't any 24 hour places to hang out until McDonald's started operating 24 hour joints 1 year ago.

All these coffee joints, with their dimmed down lights and their kitschy decor, and their conception as a kind of a "lifestyle" place, where you didn't just buy coffee, but also comfort and a place to hang out for an hour or 2 or even more. I used to think they were something new until one day I saw somebody in Starbucks reclining on a sofa, cold drink in hand, doing nothing but staring dreamily at the ceiling, and then it hit me: the gourmet coffee joints are the new version of the opium den.

Now you know that it's a sign of the times that you have this sort of thing. Real Singaporeans, and I mean 20th century Singaporeans, the sort you had before the immigrant floodgates were opened at the turn of the century, aren't so crazy that they want to study stuff all night.

There are other places open all night, like nightclubs or brothels or stuff like that. But you know I'm more interested in places where I can read my books. I mean really. 24 hour joints of course make sense in HDB estates where there are so many people nearby that you can be assured of a steady flow of customers at all times of the day. Even if I don't get an astounding amount of reading done at that time of the day I do feel more alive then than normal. Don't ask me why.

Thing is, you sometimes get a lot of weirdos and freaks around. It's true. At McD's you are there for a clean environment (as opposed to my dusty bookshelf room). And I'm sure that there are a lot of senior citizens who turn up there like hanging out there much more than their dreary 3 room flats. They get free air con, it's less lonely than there. I don't mind saying this about them, even though it's plainly disrespectful because I would say exactly the same for myself.

Now it gets annoying when they are tramps. This is unfortunate, but McDonald's is a tramp magnet. I once visited a old friend in the states, and he was staying in a small town. He agreed to pick me up at the McDonald's but later on told me that it was a very dangerous place because a lot of loonies hang out there, and some murders were committed in the bathrooms of that place. Thank your lucky stars you're living in nice safe Singapore where this sort of shit doesn't take place. But you still get a lot of freaks and weirdos.

There are those people who don't really bathe when they have to. Then they will sit down there, without buying anything and enjoy... well I don't know what they're enjoying. I prefer to be reading a book.

There is this auntie who will just rummage through other people's leftovers and collect every plastic bag that she can lay her hands on. Is it possible to sell these things for money? Or is it a fetish? I don't really know. But it's a little painful to watch.

There are some 50 something old people who just go there, plonk themselves down at a table to sleep. I think they probably have homes, but I don't know why they think that sleeping at a table is more glamorous than sleeping in their own beds.

Then there was this Indian guy, extremely interesting. He was clearly a nutcase, belligerent. Spent the better part of 15 minutes hollering at the counter staff to clean up the 2 tables which constituted the smoker's corner. (Now I can understand that our well meaning gahment doesn't like ppl to smoke. But 2 tables out of 50? That's pretty sick.) Screaming Hokkien vulgarities at the top of his voice, and poor me seated 15 m away trying to enjoy his quality time with his book. Then proclaiming to everybody that he's a "Sinhalese from Sri Lanka, not an Indian". Whatever.

Then he still managed to get fresh with one of the Indian staff, young lady, plump but not ugly. And goodness knows how she put up with him. (Later on I found out that she knows elementary Mandarin. Pretty impressive.)

Seated at the next table from him is a middle aged woman, who was possibly a party animal maybe 20 years ago, maybe even a McDonald's kid. But looks like she got dealt a bad hand by life. Puffing on her cigarette all alone. Then the crazy indian guy sidles up to her, and starts sweet talking her. Incredibly she is susceptible to his charms, and soon starts staring shyly downwards, muttering stuff like "are you sure you like me? But nobody likes me". I don't know which of those 2 to be more exasperated with.

I usually seek out McD's because I think that it is a nice quiet place. I try not to get put off by these weirdos (yes I am actually calling somebody else a weirdo) and I try not to be too condescending towards them but watching their antics is not really what I went there for, and people usually have to be better behaved for me to enjoy being in the same room as them.

It's past 4 by the time I leave, and I had just finished a half of "The Gatekeepers". I order breakfast, eat it, and then go home. I had intended to go jogging at 7 in the morning, but am fast asleep by 6:30 and end up waking up at 2 in the afternoon.